History of Sex in Cinema:The Greatest and Most Influential
Sexual Films and Scenes(Illustrated)

1978

The History of Sex in Cinema

Movie Title/Year and Film/Scene Description

Screenshots

(National Lampoon's)
Animal House (1978)

This
very popular, low-brow, 'gross-out' anarchistic comedy from National Lampoon and
director John Landis was the first big-studio comedy of its kind aimed
specifically at the teen and college demographic. It was Landis' follow-up
film to the previous year's Kentucky Fried Movie (1977). It set the
standard for many subsequent teen comedies in the 1980s and after.
Following the film was a TV series titled Delta
House (1979).

The 'guilty pleasure' R-rated film was an unexpected major
hit - and the first of many other successors. It provided star-making
roles for many young actors (John Belushi, Kevin Bacon, Tom Hulce,
Tim Matheson, Stephen Furst, and Karen Allen).

The quintessential college
frat party film was set at fictional Faber College in 1962 in the misfit
Delta Tau Chi fraternity house - known for debauchery, drinking, and
other misadventures (including a toga party, which soon became a raging
phenomenon). It pitted the fraternity in a madcap war against administrators
and some ROTC members.

One of its classic scenes was the 'Peeping Tom' scene
of prankster John "Bluto"
Blutarsky (John Belushi, a Saturday Night Live regular) on a ladder outside
a sorority house top story window. He
glanced backwards to share a conspiratorial glance with the voyeuristic
film audience behind him. He was spying on an undressing
Mandy Pepperidge (Mary Louise Weller) who momentarily touched herself.
After she engaged in a topless pillow fight with others - in the
excitement his ladder tipped backwards.

A few of the other Delta fraternity members also scored with
other females: slimy and suave Eric "Otter" Stratton (Tim
Matheson) made out with Shelly Dubinsky (Lisa Baur) in a car.

In another great
scene, new recruit Larry "Pinto" Kroger (Tom Hulce) debated
with a devil and angel figure (his conscience) on his shoulders about
whether to take advantage of passed-out coed Clorette dePasto (Sarah
Holcomb) - not knowing that she was the mayor's 13 year-old daughter:

Director Walerian Borowczyk's erotic, well-photographed
arthouse film was based upon notorious French author Stendhal's Roman
Walks (or Promenades Dans Romanes). The soft-focus drama
was one of a number of "Convent Erotica" sexploitation
(or nunsploitation) films.

It told about an early 19th century nunnery run by
a fervent sword-cane-wielding disciplinarian Mother Superior, Abbess
Flavia Orsini (Gabriella Giacobbe). The pale-faced, sexually-repressed
nuns reveled in rousing organ music in the chapel, danced to violin,
performed sexy acrobatic leg exercises, and engaged in same-sex breast
fondling in a confessional booth. The Mother Superior was appalled
by the sensual urges of her charges, fearing that the "King
of Darkness" had overtaken them.

To suppress their behaviors, she punished their hysterical,
sacrilegious actions and sins against the Lord by forbidding them,
although it was a vain effort, and forcing the guilty to repent and
beg for forgiveness. She also resorted to searching rooms for contraband
materials (including mirrors, love letters, dirty pictures, etc.).

The film's most notorious scene was one in which one
of the nuns (Olivia Pascal) found a piece of wood (a large round
dowel) on some broken window-pane glass, deflected from a woodcutter
below. She took the wood and shard of glass back to her room and
- while naked under her gown - she carved herself a large wooden
dildo. She held the round stick of wood over a large bowl where the
shavings were collected as she whittled. She commissioned another
artistic nun (who was in the midst of drawing a figure of a man with
an erect penis!) to draw a small image of the bearded face of Jesus
Christ to glue to the handle base of the carved wooden phallus -
for blasphemous masturbatory purposes to induce religious ecstasy.
In the hard-core versions of the film, she pleasured herself with
the Jesus-headed wooden dildo, while watching the image of Jesus
in a hand-held mirror, and causing bloody injury to herself.

When caught using the bloody instrument which she had
just rinsed in a white bowl, she claimed it was only a "stick...that
fell from heaven as I came down the hall. It crashed right through
the window at my feet." The Mother Superior was incensed that
the nun also had a mirror in her possession, and asked: "What
was going on?...Show me what was going on here!" The nun complied
and demonstrated above her clothes, causing the shocked Mother Superior
to call her "shameless."

Nun (Olivia Pascal) Carving Herself A Wood Dildo
and Using It

The Mother Superior found herself forced to deal with
more serious forms of sexual experimentation - masturbation, lesbianism,
and illicit sex. Her own niece - the love-starved, chaste nun Sister
Clara (the director's wife Ligia Branice) began to regularly meet
up and be seduced by the Father Confessor's (Mario Maranzana) virile,
and she had ecstatic sex with ne'er-do-well nephew Rodrigo Landriani
(Howard Ross). The visits of the local meat butcher Silva (Alessandro
Partexano), the "meat man," were restricted after he was
found having a secret affair with pale-faced Sister Martina (Loredana
Martinez).

One of the nuns, Sister Veronica (Marina Pierro) inflicted
stigmata on herself with a bouquet of thorny roses attached to the
crown of a crucifix.

The film ended with the Mother Superior accidentally
dead of a poisoning overdose of laudanum, and a few of the distraught
nuns had committed suicide.

Director Hal Ashby's late 1970s
liberal, well-acted anti-war treatise which ultimately cost
about $7.2 million, grossed $32.7 million in the U.S. The successful
film depicted the effects of the Vietnam War - in the intimate, steamy
and provocative relationship (both sexual and romantic) between:

Her deranged, war-captain Marine husband Capt.
Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) was on a lengthy tour of duty in Vietnam, and formed
the third part of a dangerous romantic love triangle.

As Luke was rehabilitated, he developed a strong and
sensitive emotional relationship with Sally, and eventually they
made love together. According to reports of the film-making, the
sex scene was fraught with anxiety. Although Sally was on top during
traditional intercourse, Luke was able to accurately gauge her sexual
needs and provide her with her first orgasm through oral sex. Her pleasurable
reaction was recorded on her face and in her squirming legs wrapped
around his back. It was a very lengthy, milestone scene for a 1970s
film.

Sally's (Jane Fonda) Adultery with a Paraplegic
(Jon Voight)

When Hyde returned home from the front with a self-inflicted
accidental injury, he confronted the two lovers with menacing anger, but
ended up committing suicide by walking naked into the ocean where he presumably
drowned.

Sally (Jane Fonda)
with Luke (Jon Voight)

Crazed (1978) (aka Nicole or The
Widow's Revenge)

Writer-director István Ventilla's poorly-made
erotic thriller from Troma Productions was at one time an impossible-to-find
relic. However, it was released on DVD to capitalize on its rarity
- to showcase 'one of a kind' topless nudity by one of its characters.
It also tried to highlight the comeback of An American in Paris and Gigi's musical
star Leslie Caron in the 1950s, now 47 years old, with the tagline:

Gigi's all grown up...and she's a sicko!

In this case, it was the appearance of 24 year-old
Catherine (credited as Kathy) Bach, and the film touted: "Her
(Catherine
Bach's) only nude scenes."

[Note: She would become famous in
coming years as Daisy Duke in the classic TV show The Dukes of
Hazzard, on the air from 1979-1985.]

The suspenseful film's plot allegedly resembled one
of the lost works of William Shakespeare, named Cardenio.

A slightly mad,
wealthy and reclusive Nicole (Leslie Caron), a decadent and lustful
bisexual widow, lived in a luxurious mansion with her strange and
burly, live-in chauffeur-butler Malcolm (Ramon Bieri). In a flashback
(the film's opening scene), he murdered his adulterous wife (Patrice
Bough) and her male partner.

Lesbian Groping of Sue (Catherine Bach) by Nicole
(Leslie Caron)

Socialite Nicole also became obsessed over young and
innocent aspiring dancer Sue (Catherine Bach) in a ballet class,
and befriended her by offering minor plastic surgery and a place
to live at the mansion.

They shared a brief breast groping and cupping (possibly
with a body double), as Nicole attempted to draw Sue into her plans
for a threesome with dashing gentleman suitor Fletcher (Bruce Graziano),
a car salesman whom she had seen on TV ads.

The film concluded with Fletcher's death (executed
by Malcolm) and Sue's death - mauled by Nicole's trained Great Dane
guard dogs.

Sue
(Catherine Bach) Threesome

Fairy Tales (1978)

Independent filmmaker and director Harry Hurwitz (aka Harry Tampa) made a career out of three low-budget comedies:

this sex-fantasy Fairy Tales (1978),
a sexed-up version (in both hard-core and soft-core varieties)
of traditional children's tales

the porn documentary Auditions (1978)

the vampire disco sex-comedy Nocturna (1979)

In
the mid-1970s, there had been a trend to release alternate sexy versions
of full stories, such as Alice
in Wonderland (1976),
and Cinderella (1977).

On
his 21st birthday, an impotent Prince (Don Sparks) was not interested
in a very-willing Naked Girl (Idy Tripodi) given to him by his advisors
as a birthday present in his bed (she complained: "You're no
fun!"). The Prince's manic sex expert Dr. Eyes ("Professor" Irwin
Corey) joked: "They only make semen white and urine yellow so
that you know whether you're comin' or goin'" - and "My
moon is in Scorpio, and my Venus is five inches below my belly-button.
Well, it's better there than in Uranus."

The Prince sought to
find the virginal Princess Sleeping Beauty in the Land of the Fairies
to "sire an heir" to the throne with her, before forfeiting
his royal throne in only a few days. Sexually attracted to her painting
("I'm sure it would work with her"), the horny Prince set
out on a quest to impregnate his comatose dream girl Sleeping Beauty
(future 80's scream queen and Queen of the B's Linnea Quigley).

Dream Princess Sleeping Beauty
(Linnea Quigley)

The
fractured fairy tale elements included numerous characters during
the Prince's journey:

tap-dancing, screeching, animal-loving buxom blonde
Little Bo Peep (Angela Aames) with lost sheep who asked the Prince: "What's
your trouble? Tell me...What's the matter? Can't you come?" with
his naive reply: "Where are ya goin'?" - she stripped for
him but to no avail, and suggested that she go see the Old Lady in
a Shoe

the Old Lady (Brenda Fogarty as Gussie Gander)
with her Shoe converted into a brothel advertised by smarmy barker-doorman
Little Tommy Tucker (Robert Staats)

a naked Shoe Elevator Girl (Mariwin
Roberts) (with only one line of dialogue: "Going down?")

a trio of masked S&M dancers (Marita
Ditmar, Evelyn Guerrero and an unknown) in a dungeon singing the
chains-whips number "Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar"

another
trio of masked naked females sang part of the chorus for the
production number: "Been a Virgin Too Long"

Finally by
film's end, after Gussie Gander failed to arouse the Prince, he came
upon the awakening virginal Sleeping Beauty who asked: "I've
been waiting for him to kiss me. What took you so long?" Soon
after, the Prince made love to his Princess, and they drove off in
a horse-drawn carriage to his castle where they constantly were in
bed and refused interruptions.

The concluding
epilogue featured the doorman strangely hawking three items: a love
potion, an "official
fairy tale Little Bo Peep sheep" for single lonely fellas, and "the
official codpiece as worn by Sirus in this motion picture."

Raoul went to great and drastic lengths to sexually
satisfy his bored wife. He first tried to enlist
other lovers to have sex with her and possibly get her pregnant. The
first failed candidate was bearded, glasses-wearing schoolteacher Stéphane
(Patrick Dewaere), a Mozart lover who also was meticulous about arranging
his complete collection of Pocket Books.

Solange (Carole Laure) With a 13 Year-Old Boy

However, success finally came through a match-up with
underaged, high-IQ, precocious, socially-awkward 13 year old virginal
boy, Christian Boloeil (Riton Liebman). After Solange rescued
the boy from bullies' hazing, she brought him to her bed where he
peeked at her beneath her nightgown as she slept. Although she was
shocked by his explorations, she soon gave herself to him and ended
up becoming pregnant by him.

Solange
(Carole Laure)

Halloween
(1978)

Director John Carpenter's low-budget slasher film Halloween
(1978), at its time, was the most profitable independent film in
industry history, with a domestic box-office gross of $47 million.

The landmark film set in motion the
Puritanical, psycho-pathological principle that surviving murder by
a psychopathic killer was directly related to the degree of one's sexual
experience. It also asserted the allegorical idea that sexual awakening
often meant the literal 'death' of innocence (or oneself).

In the film's opening sequence (filmed from the POV
of the young killer wearing a Halloween mask) - after teenaged Judith
Myers (Sandy Johnson) had sex with her boyfriend Tommy (David Kyle),
the six-year-old killer Michael Myers (Will Sandin as boy) took a
large butcher knife, entered his near-naked sister's upstairs bedroom
where he found her sitting and brushing her hair in front of a vanity
table. After he surveyed her bedsheets, she turned and recognized
her brother: "Michael!" The
act of illicit sex stirred him to commit a hideous crime. Although
she tried to defend herself, he furiously stabbed her to death in a
brutal murder, and her bloodied body tumbled to the floor.

In this film, the murders often occurred
after sexual encounters when victims were distracted and off-guard.
The dark silhouette of the serial killer
Michael Myers was slightly visible to the right as teenaged Lynda
(P.J. Soles) and her boyfriend Bob (John Michael Graham) made love
in a bed next to a jack-o-lantern. Shortly later, Bob was killed
by stabbing and Lynda was strangled with a phone cord.

The
virginal baby-sitting main character Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) was
able to escape mostly unscathed (as did the asexual Dr. Loomis,
the young pre-teen Tommy Doyle, and asexual Myers himself!), but others
who were more promiscuous and sexually-charged were less fortunate
and suffered deadly consequences as stalked victims.

Judith Myers
(Sandy Johnson)Lynda
(P.J. Soles)

I Spit on Your Grave (1978) (aka Day of the Woman)

Director/writer Meir Zarchi's low-budget vengeance
story was a notorious gang rape/vigilante film with exploitative
splatter-horror film elements. The film was banned outright in many countries,
and vilified by critics everywhere.

It told about thin NYC socialite/aspiring
short story writer Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton, married to director/writer/producer
Zarchi at the time of filming) who rented a remote and woodsy, lakeside
dwelling in upstate NY (filmed in Connecticut) for the summer. When
she first arrived at the home, she went skinny-dipping. She inadvertently
met aimless locals at a gas station:

She was aggressively harrassed, confronted, and repeatedly
violated by the four locals, who used one excuse that they were aiding
Matthew in losing his virginity. The painful-to-watch sequence was
graphic, lengthy (40 minutes in a 100 minute film!), and particularly
vicious, including both a vaginal and brutal anal rape in the muddy
forest.

There was a second attempted rape in her
rental house by an impotent, slightly-drunken Matthew. He complained
to his buddies: "I
can't come, you're interrupting my concentration...I can't, not with
people watching me."
As Jennifer laid there helpless, Stanley told her: "Total submission.
That's what I like in a woman. Total submission," then briefly bottle-raped
her and thrust his crotch into her face, yelling: "Suck it, bitch!"

Vengeful Retaliation of Jennifer (Camille Keaton) Against
Johnny

Afterwards, the traumatized victim's angry, cold-blooded revenge was
enacted against each of the four attackers, two of which were carried out seductively:

The quintessential 70s
teen beach film by director Robert J. Rosenthal had the taglines:
"Before There Was 'Baywatch,' There Was
... 'Malibu Beach'," and "Everything Can Happen on Malibu Beach."

The simplistic film was very forgettable and bland,
although typical of late 70's and early 80's teen-beach movies of
the time, with a bare minimum of T&A shots.

The Crown International Picture was set at Malibu
in S. California, and had all the typical ingredients of teen sex
comedies, including a non-stop disco-inspired soundtrack and:

boozing and pot-smoking

beach
parties at night with skinny-dipping

sexy lifeguards of both sexes

wild summer nights

hot-rods

a bikini top-stealing dog

The main plot was about blonde and shy Malibu Beach
lifeguard Dina (Kim Lankford), a very hot bombshell, often accompanied
by her care-free school pal, Sally (Susan Player) and her boyfriend
Paul (Michael Luther).

There was also horny and topless Glorianna (Tara Strohmeier)
who was making out with Bobby (James Daughton) at the beach, but
he became distracted and more interested in Dina after a midnight
swim, although also competing for Dina's attention was muscle-bound
older trouble-maker Dugan Hicks (Steve Oliver).

Director Alan Parker's harrowing drama
was factually-based upon the main character's account - an American student
who described his experience in a 1977 book and told about his brutal
imprisonment in a hellish
Turkish prison for hash possession.

The screenplay was written by Oliver
Stone, who took some cinematic liberties with the facts. When the
film was accused of presenting anti-Turkish sentiment, Stone apologized
(many years later) for his tampered celluloid version.

In the fall of 1970, young Billy Hayes
(Brad Davis) was arrested at the Istanbul, Turkey airport when security
guards found bricks of hash taped to his body. He was sentenced for
drug possession to over four years in prison.

Over the years, he was
stripped at gunpoint, and
forced to endure beatings, rape (although fictionalized), and torture
by sadistic guards. He was finally able to successfully escape in 1975.

In
one scene during his incarceration, the sexually-desperate Billy asked
his prison-visiting girlfriend Susan (Irene Miracle) to show him her
breasts. She pressed them against the partition's glass so he could
kiss them and pleasure himself. She sobbed: "I wish I could make it better
for you."

Louis Malle's American debut film was a
semi-scandalous picture upon its release. The semi-historical,
gorgeously-photographed, documentary-styled film was set in a 1917 New
Orleans bordello in the red-light district of Storyville. Customers
were entertained with ragtime music by cathouse piano player "The Professor"
(Antonio Vargas).

The film was highly controversial
and improperly charged with promoting child porn in the 1970s, although
today, it would be considered tame. Various
later versions were edited (with dark shading or re-framing closeups)
to avoid portraying underage nudity. The tagline described the film's
point of view:

The image of an adult world through a child's eyes.

It told the plodding, tragic, coming-of-age story of a
virginal, pre-teen 12 year-old Violet (Brooke Shields) as a child prostitute,
who was accompanied by her languid brothel mother Hattie (Susan Sarandon).
Brothel patrons bid in an auction for the honor of taking Violet's
virginity. In
one of the more contested scenes, the brothel madam, Madam Nell (Frances
Faye), later offered the naked Violet in her bath to a dumbfounded
customer:

"Now, how about it? Pure as the driven snow."

Brooke Shields as Pretty Baby Child Prostitute Violet

Violet and her mother
were both often photographed nude by much older Ernest Bellocq (Keith
Carradine) - who also married the young girl - signifying the complete
loss of innocence after Hattie had abandoned her (she had married a
rich client and moved to St. Louis)!

When
the coquettish Violet reclined for a long period of time on a chaise
lounger as the obsessed Bellocq fiddled with his camera for more picture-taking,
Violet became frustrated, lept up, and approached the camera angrily
and rebelliously: "I'm
tired of lyin' here....It's always one second more with you, and why
do you want to take my picture again and again and again?...I don't
have to stay here and listen to you yell at me. Well, I'm leaving,
and you won't have anyone to photograph anymore." To spite him, she
smashed a photographic plate and scratched out the image on another.
He viciously slapped her across the face and ordered: "Get out, get
out Violet, before I kill you if you destroy any more of my pictures."

Hattie
(Susan Sarandon)Violet
(Brooke Shields)

Sextette (1978)

One of the worst turkey films (or flops)
ever made was "sin-sational" Mae West's final film (her first
film was in 1932, 46 years earlier) - it was an embarrassing and campy
effort directed by Ken Hughes and distributed by Crown International
Pictures. The sex comedy was based on her own Broadway musical, titled Sextet.
The bawdy Mae West maintained her sex-kitten persona while
parodying herself at the age of 85.

It was about aging Hollywood actress Marlo
Manners (Mae West) who was in London,
paired with her newlywed sixth husband, young British nobleman Sir
Michael Barrington (32-year old Timothy Dalton), and now known as Lady
Barrington. They were spending their honeymoon in a hotel suite which
was also the site of an international conference composed of diplomats.
The couple was constantly being interrupted by hotel personnel, requests
for interviews, PR demands, fans, reporters, and fashion and photo
sessions. There were a host of cameo and guest appearances by many
celebrities, including Beatle Ringo Starr, Tony Curtis, George Hamilton,
Alice Cooper, Rona Barrett, Regis Philbin, and George Raft.

One of the
most improbable and awkward scenes found Lady Barrington in a gymnasium surrounded
by studly, sex-hungry muscular men from the US Gymnastics Team.

She was in the process of dictating her scandalous
memoirs, and often croaked uncomfortably unfunny double entendres
or quips as she strutted around:

"I'm the girl who works for Paramount
all day, and Fox all night"

"Well, marriage is like a book,
the whole story takes place between the covers"

"Is that a gun in
your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?" - an old standby
that she hadn't actually said in any of her earlier films

At one point, Sir Michael spoke/sang
to her the disco hit and their signature tune Love Will Keep Us
Together, which West lip-synched. At the end of the film, when
she finally found herself in bed, Sir Michael complimented her,
and she had a comeback:

Sir Michael: "You've done more for your country than Paul Revere."
Lady Barrington: "Well, I'm looking forward to saying the same thing
he said. 'Oh, the British are coming! Hmm.'"

Marlo Manners
(Mae West)

Stay As You Are (1978, It/Sp.)
(aka Cosi' Come Sei)

This
little known provocative European film from director Alberto Lattuada
was released in the US in late 1979.

Giulio was sexually-tempted by Francesca, but worried
about it because she resembled the woman he had an affair with two
decades earlier - and she might be his own daughter. The film included
full frontal female nudity, and scenes of various interludes of love-making
and playfulness, including a notable bedroom and breakfast scene,
in which she encouraged him to spank and then bite into her rear
end, and another unusual scene in which she offered him a cup of
her pee.

Kinski's role was the precursor to her role in director/lover Roman Polanski's Tess
(1979).

Francesca
(Nastassja Kinski)

The Stud (1978, UK)

This late 1970's camp film from director Quentin Masters
was a sordid tale of sexual lust and illicit love that concluded
with the decline of the film's male "stud." The pretentious
tale was adapted from the book by Jackie Collins, the younger sister
of the film's main star. After the film's success, a companion film
sequel was released titled
The Bitch (1979).

Its main character, however, wasn't the stud but
a nymphomaniacal and decadent Mrs. Fontaine Khaled (mid-40s Joan
Collins), the wife of wealthy London businessman Ben Khaled (Walter
Gotell). She was employed as her husband's members-only disco night-club
hostess, where she had made the club's virile and studly manager
Tony Blake (Oliver Tobias) her personal plaything - she threatened
his job if he didn't comply with her sexual needs.

A series of silly sex scenes (including elevator love-making)
culminated in a notorious group orgy scene at a Parisian swimming
pool. It involved her swinging on a swing and having sex at the same
time with Tony. He also began an affair with Fontaine's manipulative
and nubile step-daughter Alex Khaled (Emma Jacobs). Alex used Tony
to seek revenge at Fontaine for cheating on her father. The husband
learned of Fontaine's indiscretions, cut off his wife's support,
and had his thugs beat up "the stud."

Fontaine Khaled
(Joan Collins)Alex
(Emma Jacobs)

An Unmarried Woman (1978)

Director/writer Paul Mazursky's
serious and groundbreaking (but dated) feminist film, a romantic drama,
portrayed the character of a Upper East Side Manhattan wife who suddenly
became insecure and
"unmarried" when her long-standing marital relationship abruptly
ended. The lengthy tagline foretold the plot:

She laughs, she cries, she feels angry, she feels lonely, she feels guilty,
she makes breakfast, she makes love, she makes do, she is strong, she is
weak, she is brave, she is scared, she is... an unmarried woman.

It told the story of NYC mid-30s wife/mother
and art-gallery worker Erica Benton (Oscar-nominated Jill Clayburgh)
who was suddenly dumped by her stockbroker husband Martin (Michael
Murphy) of sixteen years for a much younger woman, a schoolteacher.
Erica was casually nude with Martin in the opening scenes, and then
was unprepared when he sobbingly confessed on the street that he had
been engaged for over a year in an affair: "I'm
in love with somebody else." She bluntly asked: "Is she a good
lay?",
then shortly later threw up in a garbage can.

She displayed obvious confusion, humiliation, nausea
and anger toward all men while seeking a divorce and engaging in therapy
with lesbian psychiatrist Tanya (Penelope Russianoff). She sarcastically
told others how it happened: "He was buying a shirt in
Bloomingdale's and he fell in love." She had a number of uncomfortable
experiences including a pass made at her by family physician Dr. Jacobs
(Daniel Seltzer). She also felt depression and loneliness,
and was overwhelmed by having to see other men or to pursue dating,
although she was advised: "I'd
risk it with some new men." A blind date with an infatuated and clueless
Bob (Andrew Duncan) at a luncheon went poorly.

She was nervously talked into a one-night
stand with smooth, gold necklace-wearing co-worker and womanizing swinger
Charlie (Cliff Gorman). She confided in him: "I've only
slept with one man in seventeen years," and although the sex was good,
something was missing.

Later, she found a more reciprocal loving relationship
with handsome and respectful, divorced English artist
Saul Kaplan (Alan Bates) - but in the end she decided to part ways
during the coming summer. She finally realized that she had to be
in control of her life as an unmarried and independent woman.